espite past criticism that its primary school feeding schemes were not reaching remote areas of the Eastern Cape, Bisho says that it is satisfied that the programme is back on track. And, adds the provincial government, bread suppliers are soon to receive outstanding payments. Many bakeries have been facing a cash crisis because the provincial […]
If South Africa’s education system can be compared to a volatile river, then schools in Stellenbosch are distant streams, meandering separately, at a pace of their own. The schools reflect the town. Issues of transformation and integration surface only occasionally, briefly interrupting its otherwise peaceful flow. Or so it seems. A recent protest at Stellenbosch […]
Mayhem marked the start of the new school year at Gelvandale Senior Secondary School in Port Elizabeth when an African National Congress leader took drastic action against the school’s admission policies. Christian Martin, an ANC MPL in the Eastern Cape who serves on the legislature’s standing committee on education, brought locks and chains to the […]
‘An educationist should never be made a minister of education, just like a military person should not be made minister of defence,” Kader Asmal, then water and forestry minister, told the Sunday Times in 1996. ‘They bring their own activist ideas, but there is more to it than that [activism].” President Thabo Mbeki, who has […]
‘My father … passed away on 1 January 1999. I live with my grandmother. She pays for my school fees from her pension, which is not enough since she also has to look after my aunt’s children and my uncle’s son. We are suffering and there is hardly any food. We request that you give […]
Naledi Pandor, the new Minister of Education, has proved through her years as community activist, academic and politician to be as calming an influence as she is an authoritative presence. No doubt these qualities are going to come in handy as the former chairperson of the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) steps into an arena […]
Despite achieving the best matric results in the country for three years in a row, the Northern Cape is not benefiting from the knowledge of school-leavers in the province. ‘We are suffering from a massive brain drain,” a worried Tina Joemat-Pettersson, provincial minister of education in the Northern Cape, told the Mail & Guardian. ‘But […]
As the number of children orphaned by Aids escalates, many hard-pressed NGOs are being forced to pay orphans’ school fees to prevent them from being excluded – despite the fact that exclusion on financial grounds is illegal. In the Ingwavuma District, for instance, which lies close to the borders of Swaziland and Mozambique in the […]
Britain’s <i>Guardian</i> newspaper remarked this week that the election of Pope Benedict XVI "will clamp the cold hand of foreboding round the hearts of all who care about the developing world". Indeed. It was also a bitter disappointment for forward-looking Catholics who want their church to contribute to the material upliftment of the world’s hungry and disease-afflicted billions, rather than merely minister to their immortal souls.
Barely three weeks after he was elected president of the South African Student Congress (Sasco), Siphiwe Zuma was tragically killed last month in a car accident. He was 23. Zuma, other members of Sasco and Julias Malema (Congress of South African Students president) were on their way to attend the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union […]